LARGE LANGUAGE LOVE, DIVINE
Scaredy Cat
…Claire sought refuge in a bar to quiet her nerves before the trip to Texas…
Scaredy Cat
"Excuse me.” A dark skinned young lady was imposing on Claire’s personal space, smiling brightly in a peasant dress, leather jacket and long underwear. A headband kept sloppy dreadlocks out of her face.
Claire smiled back.
"I'm sorry but - this is going to sound crazy - did you ever work at Idlewild?"
The question knocked Claire out of her thoughts. "I was a volunteer, I guess. A long time ago."
"Oh my god. Like, in the early 80s?"
"Yes."
"Oh fuck. Oh shit. Cause I... I was one of the kids you worked with. Mary Ann. You probably don't remember me but I totally recognized you and I had to tell you - you're the reason I am who I am."
"Come again?"
Mary Ann was drunk and glistening. "You taught me about songs. You used to come in with that guitar. Remember? That's what made me fall in love with music. Now I'm kinda dividing my time between following Phish and helping my friend Ani. Have you heard Ani Difranco?"
"No." Claire was trying to put Mary Ann's face onto the body of a toddler.
"Oh man. She's the best. She sort of reminds me of you. No kidding. Is this totally fucked up? Am I freaking you out? This is so wild. Cause like, I do Ani's merch, but we're taking a couple months off and I just turned twenty-one," Mary Ann giving a huge wink, "and my girlfriend was like - oh, you gotta meet my girlfriend."
Claire met Ambers, Mary Ann's girl friend. Ambers was a little person decked out in a tiny leather motorcycle jacket so that she looked like The Wizard Of Oz mashed up with The Wild Ones. Mary Ann insisted on buying a round. Claire reminded herself to sip very slowly. Mary Ann talked loudly about life and her adventures with Ani. Both her and Ambers kept paying for rounds and laughing. Claire was laughing with them. The bar was now crowded and everyone was drinking and full of good cheer. Claire felt she was in the the happiest place in the entire world. Mary Ann and Ambers were going to see Scaredy Cat do a midnight show at the Barn in College Town.
"Are you kidding me?" Claire said, signaling the bartender because she felt she needed to get the next round. "They were big when I was in high school. I never saw them because I didn't go to shows, but they were big. I remember people saying they were going to be like, The B52s or something."
"You know the deal?"
"I don't know the deal."
"Well, there's the Scaredy Cat house on the corner of Buffalo and Fullerton and the rule is you can live there rent free, but you have to be in Scaredy Cat."
"No shit. I was in Rochester for a while so I wasn't exactly following the whole Ithaca scene."
"The original members all work at the particle accelerator at Cornell, but they still own the house and yeah, all this time there's been all these different versions, and everyone writes their own songs and right now they're more like, more industrial. They've got this guy living there who builds these crazy drums out of found objects."
Claire thought: Zeph. She felt her eyes expand and electricity crackled inside her chest. "But he's not in the band? He just lives there?"
"Yeah. I've been there a couple of times. He's also a baker, I think." Mary Ann shrugged and looked around. Claire assumed she was seeing if Ambers had returned from the bathroom. She leaned in close and grinned fiercely and said, "I'm sort of also fucking the bassist."
…Claire confronts Zeph, or something like that…